The ministry of truth

We've seen rather more than usual of the lean, thin-lipped Peter Mandelson this week. While Tony Blair has been on holiday, the Minister Without Portfolio has been 'the August duty troubleshooter' - the man in charge. Well, technically it's John Prescott . But as Mandelson says, this week, ' Prescott makes the decisions - and I take the flak.' He was there at yesterday's press conference to mark 100 days of Labour rule. That was him, too, at Tuesday's announcement of Lord Simon's decision to sell his British Gas shares. He even became headline news himself, accused of 'fixing' the press by diverting attention from the Robin Cook affair. The Tories, meanwhile, have clearly decided that Peter Mandelson is public enemy number one - this week's Spectator runs three articles on him, one calling him the 'best at the business (of news manipulation) since Goebbels'.

So after a week like that, I might forgive the fact that he doesn't shake my hand on meeting, and that he doesn't say hello. We sit in the Cabinet Office in Whitehall on black leather chairs, the sort you might find next to a CD tower in a bachelor pad, and right away he is showing me his sensitive side. We're talking about the pictures on his wall. 'I like those,' - he points - 'because my father had a print by the same artist on the wall in front of the table on which I worked for my O and A levels. So those pictures remind me of home. They remind me of my father, actually, who I miss.' His eyes go a little glassy, and I fear he is going to burst into tears, like he did, famously, in a TV interview discussing his father's death. Silence hangs in the air. 'Right, the interview,' he says. I have been in his company two minutes.

Today being the 100th day, Mandelson wants to talk about the Government's successes. About the economy, the European summit in Amsterdam, the modernisation of the House of Commons. 'I am very proud of those decisions,' he says. His voice is slightly plummy, and also rather flat, with the timbre of a man much older than his 43 years.

There have been successes, undoubtedly. Hasn't there been a bit of a blip recently, though, I say: the loss of the Uxbridge by-election, the suicide of Gordon McMaster, the Lord Simon affair. 'Well, the Daily Telegraph has an 83 per cent approval rating for the Government's performance to date,' he says. 'I think that's rather good.' This is just one of the things that Peter Mandelson is supreme at: putting the best possible spin on the image of the Labour Party. In fact, it is the only thing that he is known for - the Machiavellian moulding of images.

But there are signs that this so-called Prince of Darkness, the man of whom Clare Short said, 'everything is in hiding,' is now ready to come out of the shadows. He has decided to stand for election to the National Executive Committee, Labour's ruling body - a popularity contest in which every Labour Party member has a vote. He wants to be seen as more than Tony's right-hand man.

'The problem for me is that people have seen me at the centre of things, doing this, doing that, apparently calling the shots, giving the orders. 'But, accountable to whom?' they ask.' Although he sits on more committees than any minister other than John Prescott and is probably the third most powerful person in Britain, his role is amorphous and he does not have a seat in Cabinet. (His ambition, he says, is to gain a Cabinet place in the next reshuffle.) 'People think: 'He's just there through the patronage of the leader. Who elected him? Who put him there?' They by and large see me as a force for good in the party and the Government, but they would like to see me be more accountable, and I think they're right.' But it's a pretty dangerous step, I say, putting yourself up for election. You might be humiliated. After all, there's a general feeling that you're not very popular.

Mandelson fixes me with a stare, an unswerving hazel gaze his lids don't blink for 12 seconds. (I counted.) 'If there is a general feeling, then it is perpetrated by the right wing, who attack me at every opportunity because they want to pull me down. The Tories are trying to destroy me because I'm a threat to the Tory Party. They're not putting the boot in because they support the Labour Party, or because they want the Government to succeed, are they?' Well, what about his critics within Labour? 'There are people in the Labour Party - I don't think they're very typical or representative of the party as a whole - who have a political disagreement with me, who didn't want to see the modernisation of the Labour Party. And they see me, as someone who has been at the cutting edge of those changes over the last 10 years - and they also see me as a more convenient target than taking a jab at Tony Blair. I'm a convenient whipping-boy.' I ask why members should vote him on to the NEC, and what I get in response is a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of Peter Mandelson . 'What I have to offer is total commitment to the Labour Party. I've worked for it all my life, man and boy.' In a similar vein, he is forever mentioning his grandfather - Herbert Morrison, who was Clement Attlee's campaign manager in the 1945 landslide - to show how great and real is his Labour lineage.

Peter Mandelson may have made an impressive job of modernising the Labour Party, of transforming its image from Red Flag comrades to Red Rose Islingtonians. But he has consistently failed to spin-doctor the image of himself. He is still portrayed invariably as slimy and calculating. Why? 'It's not my job to worry and fuss about every nuance of press coverage,' he says. Of course it is, I say, that is exactly what you do. 'No, it's not. My job is to serve the party and to serve the Government. The success of the Government will in time reflect on me.' Come on, I say, you are one of the most ruthless practitioners of news management of our age. 'Well, it depends what you mean by news management,' he says. 'If you're accusing me of getting the truth across about what the Government has decided to do, that I'm putting the very best face or gloss on the Government's policies, that I'm trying to avoid gaffes or setbacks and that I'm trying to create the truth - if that's news management, I plead guilty.' What a chilling phrase that is: 'To create the truth'.

Peter Mandelson is renowned among political journalists for the extent to which he is prepared to go to create that truth. Write something negative and you might be ignored for a month, your editor might be harangued, your appearance at press conferences turned into public humiliation.

The word bully is often pinned to Mandelson , but he claims that's just a conspiracy peddled by the media, not least in his view by this newspaper. 'If you read the Guardian every day you will see a steady drip, drip, drip of poison - something amounting to a character assassination of me by the Guardian diary,' he says. 'I'm sorry the Guardian go in for it, but there's nothing I can do about it and I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep over it.' But he clearly does care about it, and care very much. This is a man who takes himself very seriously indeed. His every word, his demeanour, his rare and false laugh, his sarcasm, all point towards a keen sense of his own self-importance.

Mandelson once said: 'If people started to like me too much I would lose all my power.' But now with the NEC vote approaching he needs to appeal to the people he needs to be liked, to be seen as a rounded person.

So when I ask if he is obsessed with politics, he says: 'If you're asking me if every moment of my life is taken up by politics, the answer is no. I sleep, I have friends, I eat, I drink, I go to the cinema, I have fun. . . . er. . . notoriously, I like dancing.' What kind of dancing? 'I can dance to almost anything,' he says, with very little exuberance, the tone of his voice remaining constant, controlled.' I enjoy life. I do all the normal things that people normally do.' The interesting thing about Peter Mandelson is that he has got more of a life than you might think. He has bought a house in Notting Hill, reportedly costing half a million pounds he works out at the similarly swanky Lambton Place Health Club his friends range from the novelist Richard Harris to James Palumbo, owner of the Ministry of Sound. He even has half a dozen godchildren - six up on Machiavelli. Rumour even has it that in private, away from politics, he is a nice man.

'I am fortunate enough to have friends who love me, and those who know me seem to like me,' he says, which is a curiously childlike and vulnerable thing to say. And yet even now I find it almost impossible to engage with him, which is strange when you consider that engaging with the people is what Mandelson wants to be all about.

He seems rather uninterested at one point he even appears to be reading something from a briefing at his right hand. The eye contact, which for the most part is intense, carries little feeling or enquiry: he could be staring at a vase.

At the end of the interview - he is in a rush, so I keep asking questions even when he's standing up - he turns to me and says, 'So many of these interviews with the Guardian over the years are all about my image, rather than what I think and do.' Well, I say, this time we've talked about thinking and doing, haven't we? 'We have,' he says, and smiles a cartoonish smile. 'And it's probably the first time ever.' 'Well there you go,' I say.

'There you go,' he echoes, turning away to his bevvy of assistants. And then he is gone, without a goodbye, without a handshake, leaving me alone in that office until an aide scuttles in to remove me.